


New Orleans - October-November 1908

by Fabrisse



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Chromatic Yuletide, Education, Gen, New Orleans, Rufus-centric, Voting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 14:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: The team are sent back for a longer assignment than usual.  The time is 1908; the city is New Orleans.





	New Orleans - October-November 1908

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Karios](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karios/gifts).



> There are a couple of period appropriate uses of the n-word. The character using it is not, in any way, sympathetic.

“We’re going when?” Rufus did not look happy.

Agent Christopher let his attitude roll off her back. “1908.”

“Tell me it’s New York? Tell me I get to help found the NAACP or failing that somewhere that’s not going to involve a noose in my near future.”

“Louisiana.” 

Lucy glared at the people across the table, and Wyatt pretended to ignore it all.

Rufus lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I’ll stay inside the ship.”

Mason said, “I’m afraid that’s impossible. It’s a scientific mission, at least partially.”

“The Yellow Fever epidemic of 1908 has just ended, there is an institute, it’s small-ish, but it will become Xavier College in a few years. They are having a problem making the required breakthrough,” Agent Christopher said.

“You know I’m a physicist, right?”

Mason shrugged. “Everything is ultimately physics.”

Agent Christopher continued, “We’re more concerned about the founding of Xavier College. There is a small group of students working out of Bon Secours parish. They are corresponding with Mother Katharine Drexel, mostly via the Redemptorist brothers.”

Lucy said, “1908 Yellow Fever epidemic?”

Rufus looked at her and said, “We’re past that now.”

“No, I mean the last Yellow Fever epidemic in New Orleans was in 1905. There is no 1908 epidemic.”

The Rittenhouse men exchanged glances with Agent Christopher. Finally one of them said, “I can assure you Professor Preston, there was a major outbreak in the late spring which lasted until July. They used the old fort on Ship Island as a quarantine zone, and the President sent in the Army to fumigate the city and cover or drain open water sources.”

Lucy said, “This is a major change to history.”

“Perhaps. When you get back, we can figure out where the change came,” one of the Rittenhouse men said.

“And fix it?” Lucy said.

“No. We think Xavier should be a college,university if you prefer, from the very beginning. This yellow fever epidemic may be the way that happens.”

For the first time Wyatt seemed to take notice of the proceedings. “Just curiosity, but how many people died in this epidemic?”

“About five thousand total. It lasted several months.”

Lucy said, “And the majority of the ones who died were new immigrants, correct? Italian, Irish…?”

“Some Latvian,” the Rittenhouse representative said. “The computer sorted through them all, none of their descendents had an effect on history.”

“So far,” Lucy said.

Wyatt added, “And you never know about a chance encounter. Maybe one of those descendents had the necessary nail for a horseshoe.”

Rufus said, “Or even the side remark that gave a scientist or philosopher the tool he needed to find the answer.”

The man from Rittenhouse gave Wyatt a piercing glare. “There were no nails.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Rufus said.

Agent Christopher said, “We think it will take you about a week in the past. Be careful who you talk to outside of Bon Secours. The group of students is experimenting with preventatives for malaria. From a diary discovered by our Rittenhouse friends, we know that cinchona bark is one of them.”

“Hadn’t quinine already been separated from cinchona by then?” Rufus asked. 

Mason raised his eyebrows and said, “See you do know something about biology.”

“Yes, it had,” Lucy confirmed.

“They made a mistake in the extraction process and missed correctly documenting the structure of quinine. Had they done so before a professor from Germany, Xavier would have been a university from its inception.”

“We also need you to bring back two items. One is the formula for the mistaken extraction. There may be a therapeutic use for it. The other is a letter, written to the Mayor of New Orleans by the governor. It discusses certain remnants of the _code Napoleon_ which is how you’ll identify it. We have the first and last sheets of a three page letter. Our goal is to have page two as well.”

“Will a photograph do?” Lucy asked. “Or a fair copy.”

“Take a photograph as a backup, but we want the original sheet. Bringing back the whole letter could create a paradox, so just the second sheet.”

Wyatt nodded. “Okay, then. Do we have a good place to leave the lifeboat while we’re there? Are we expecting major interference from Flynn?” 

Jiya looked up from her computer. “I have some ideas about parking the lifeboat.”

“It is impossible to tell if you’ll have interference from Flynn, but we think it’s less likely since we’re not responding to one of his incursions,” Agent Christopher said. “Any other questions?”

There were general murmurs, but no one spoke up. 

“Good. We expect the mission to begin in three hours.”

***  
Among them, they decided that Rufus would find a respectable boarding house in the black part of town, while Wyatt would do the same elsewhere. Lucy hoped she could find a “woman’s hotel” near one or the other of them, so that their daily check-ins wouldn’t be too onerous. In any event, once the lifeboat was secured and they’d scheduled their meetings, each took off separately.

A series of fires had been set around the prosperous part of the black area of town which gave Rufus more cover than he might have had, but also meant that rooms in respectable boarding establishments were unavailable. As it came closer to night, he went to Bon Secours parish and asked one of the brothers if he knew anywhere a respectable man could stay.

“You are from out of town?” Brother Paul had asked.

“Not exactly, sir. I was out of town for about a month, too long for the landlady to hold an empty room, and I couldn’t afford to pay two rents. When I came back I hoped either she or someone else would have rooms, but the fires…”

“We have room for guests, but we expect them to follow the life of the order while here -- well, we will let you have a full night’s sleep, but between lauds and vespers we expect you to attend the office. You are Catholic, I assume.”

“Yes, sir.” Rufus had been baptized and gone to Catholic schools. “Wouldn’t want to say how long it was since I went to Mass, though. What do I pay for the room?”

“You have money?”

“Yes, Brother Paul. I just didn’t have the room to spend it on.”

“And can you work?”

“Depends on the work. I have some skills.”

Brother Paul seemed amused. “You look respectable. I’m certain you do, but may I ask what they are?”

“I have basic knowledge of wiring, pipes, and plumbing and advanced knowledge of tensile strength and stress factors for most building materials,” Rufus said, adding “and some you’ve never heard of” in the back of his mind. 

“Really?”

Rufus took the opening and pulled out the diploma and identity papers the crew back home had created for him. He insisted that they always use his correct birthday, so all he had to do was memorize the year and that, if he needed proof of his education, it was always MIT. Several times the artists and historians had tried to persuade him that his credentials should come from Tuskegee or Howard, but as he’d said to them, “I earned my degree from MIT. I don’t care what time period it is.”

Brother Paul looked at the sheepskin in his hand and said, “I believe the good lord sent you to us. Please come with me to see Father Bosquet.”

An hour later after a quiz on scientific principles and basic German with Father Bosquet, Rufus was ensconced in a large ground floor room with permission to miss all of the daily office except for morning mass and vespers.

***  
There were eight of them, five girls and three boys. The makeup of his little group had surprised him. One of the nuns, Sister Benedicta, saw his reaction and said, “There won’t be a problem, Mister Carlin, will there?”

“No, Sister.”

“Good. Because we find the young ladies are often quicker to learn than the young men. The men see what not working is costing their families. The ladies see how much the skills could help their families.”

Rufus nodded. “That makes perfect sense, Sister.”

He’d begun with a quiz of what they knew, what experiments they were currently pursuing, and, much to their astonishment, a question about what they wanted out of their studies.

For most of the young women it was a teaching position, which paid better and was more respectable than most positions available to them. One young lady, Cecilia, the youngest at fifteen, said, “I want to keep going until maybe Mrs. Curie will let me work with her. I think she’s remarkable.”

“I agree,” Rufus said. “So let’s see if we can get you stronger in your chemical and physical studies. Your teachers praise all of you highly for your biological knowledge.”

The young men echoed Sister Benedicta’s assessment, they couldn’t see how this would do them and theirs more good than getting a job would.

“You’re lucky. New Orleans has been electrified for over ten years. There are still large parts of the country that aren’t. They have men who can run wires and do basic testing, but do they have engineers who can understand the whole project? Those positions are essential, but they require the kind of education you’re getting here. It make take you a couple more years to get those skills, but once you do, you can name your own salary. And if you’re willing to move away from New Orleans to one of those cities that’s just beginning to electrify, you’ll be able to earn even more. So let’s get started.”

***  
Lucy and Wyatt both approached their task from separate angles. Lucy did her best to make a favorable impression on the mayor’s wife and, by being invited into their home, have a chance to check the mayor’s home office for the letter.

Wyatt walked in the front door and asked for a job protecting the mayor. It took a couple of quick fights with some of the toughs who thought it was already their job to look after hizzoner, but Wyatt had his position by the end of the second day, mostly because the mayor took a shine to him. They’d agreed that he’d be responsible for searching the mayor’s public office for the letter.

In the meantime, they met up publicly at a local park most mornings, and one or the other of them, but usually Lucy, saw Rufus at a different park in the afternoon. 

The first two weeks followed the same routine.

***  
The three young men had taken his words to heart, and much of Rufus afternoon was now coaching them on the essentials they’d need for electrical engineering in this era. 

While Rufus’ main teaching duty revolved around physics, chemistry, and engineering, he also helped monitor the lab work in biology, just as the physician who acted as their primary biology teacher helped monitor the chemistry and physics lab work.

He kept a close eye on the students to make certain they weren’t about to poison themselves -- or him -- and tried to figure out the whole cinchona extraction. Like Wyatt, he had a miniature camera in his tie tack, so each day, he took pictures of the extraction notes, even if they hadn’t gotten to cinchona bark yet. He didn’t like Rittenhouse, but he was willing to accept their word that some mistakes could lead to drugs that just weren’t possible in the time the mistakes were made.

When the day came, close to the end of the third week in New Orleans, he watched as the quinine extract went wrong. He took pictures of all the notes, and then quietly took Doctor Alphonse aside and asked her if the formula she’d put up on the board looked right. 

“Class. Science is about learning from our mistakes,” Doctor Alphonse said. “Mister Carlin has just shown me one of mine.” The error in the formula was corrected. “I’ll leave this up on the board overnight, and we’ll begin this again in the morning when we’re fresh. Thank you, Mister Carlin, for catching that. I’ll see everyone tomorrow.” She and the women in the class left quickly.

Toussaint, probably the smartest of the boys he was tutoring said, “Mister Carlin, could we miss this evenings coaching? There is a rally for the gubernatorial election and I want to take my girl to see the illuminations and transparencies.”

“I won’t keep you then. The election is next Tuesday. Are any of you…” He caught himself, the voting age was still twenty-one in this time. “Are any of your families going to vote?”

There were general headshakes. Byron, one of his students said, “My Pa voted in aught-four, but he’s passed, and my uncle doesn’t think he could pass the test.”

“Your uncle’s illiterate?”

“No, sir. He reads very well. But that’s not all they ask on the literacy tests. People have been asked to read passages in foreign languages. This year the rumor is that eight out of the twenty questions are advanced mathematics. The kind of thing most white men couldn’t pass neither, sorry, either.”

Jeannot, the last of his little band said, “Men in my family are in the same boat. Give them a passage in English, or French for ‘bout half of ‘em, and they’ll do as well as any white man. Ask them about music, and they’d probably pass even higher. But they don’t know any more math than they need to keep straight books, and that doesn’t take calculus.”

Byron said, “Could you coach them, sir? You know the math.”

“If I knew the specific type of question, I could coach them, but I can’t teach them everything.”

Jeannot said, “Maybe we could get our hands on the test?”

“That’s cheating,” Toussaint said.

Byron shook his head. “Maybe it is, but not making every man who wants to vote take the same test is cheating too. If they were giving it to everyone, I wouldn’t be happy, but I could say it was fair. But as it is now, they’re stacking the deck against us.”

Rufus said, “I know, son. And I’m sorry there’s not more than I can do.”

***  
Late the following Monday evening, Lucy managed to find a few moments at a ball to go through the Mayor’s office and found the letter. She took the second page, and tucked it away safely in her busk, before returning to dance the night away.

***  
With both missions wrapped up, Wyatt sought out Bon Secours and let Rufus know they were leaving that afternoon. He had a quiet word with Brother Paul about a project up in Baton Rouge that required Rufus’ expertise and, as he’d earlier agreed with Lucy, donated the remaining money they had for the time period to the parish. It didn’t take Rufus long to pack, but saying goodbye to his pupils took more than a few moments.

As he and Wyatt left to meet Lucy, they passed the big polling place in the French Quarter. Three young black men were being sent down the steps after failing the so-called “literacy test.”

One man, who was not local from his accent, stood at the top of the steps and said, “Ain’t no nigger alive who can pass this test.”

Wyatt took one look at Rufus’ face and said, “No.”

“You can’t go anywhere without me. I say yes.”

“It could cause a riot.”

Rufus said, “Look around you, Wyatt, you think there might not be one anyhow?”

Wyatt said, “Give me your bag. I’ll go tell Lucy.”

Rufus nodded. He saw Byron, Toussaint, and Jeannot with their families. He took a deep breath and said, “And if one nigger,” he winced as the word came out of his mouth, “if one nigger can pass it, will you let all the other negroes who are registered have their vote?”

“Ain’t gonna happen, boy.”

“Then what do you have to lose?” Rufus asked.

His students gathered around him, and he said to them quietly, “You understand that I can’t guarantee I’ll pass. There may be a foreign language on there that I don’t know.”

“They’ll try to jigger it, we know,” Toussaint said, “but it’s better to have someone try.”

The other two young men patted his back.

“How do I know you ain’t gonna cheat?” The man on the steps said. He could hear the murmurings of the crowd and knew he couldn’t say no to the proposition without a valid reason.

Father Bosquet said, “I volunteer to proctor. Perhaps there is someone else who would care to do the same?”

“Where did he come from?” Rufus asked the others.

“He always takes a constitutional at this time of day,” Jeannot said.

“I volunteer to proctor, too.” Lucy’s voice came from behind him.

“Now, I think this is too much for a lady to understand,” the man on the steps said, but the crowd was obviously getting restive. 

Father Bosquet said, “I’m certain this respectable young woman can make certain there’s no malfeasance.”

The man on the step said, “Awright, but I’m in the room, too. No risks that one of you might slip him the answers.”

Rufus walked forward with Lucy and Father Bosquet trailing behind him. When he came to the level of the man standing on the step, he turned toward the crowd and said, “If I pass this test, you guarantee that every registered voter here will be allowed to mark his ballot without interference?”

“‘Course, I do. But a passing grade on this test is one hundred percent.”

Rufus gave a hollow chuckle. “I never thought it would be otherwise.”

Once in the room, Rufus sat down at the desk provided and picked up a pencil. The man put the test in front of him and the others disported themselves around the room. When he turned it over, Rufus couldn’t help but smile, there were only fifteen questions and nine of them were mathematical. He started with those problems. They were on a level about equal to an eighth or ninth grader in his time, and Rufus completed them quickly, double checking to make certain there were no errors in the simple arithmetic. The three history questions nearly made him laugh out loud. They covered the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Alamo, and the French and Indian War. Two questions were grammar questions, and the final one was a paragraph to translate. Since so many New Orleans natives spoke at least a little French, the writer of the test decided to use German which Rufus had studied to fulfill his language requirement. The passage was from Goethe and he translated it with only a little difficulty.

“I’m finished.”

The man from the step said, “You can’t be, boy, it ain’t been but a half an hour.”

“Nevertheless, I’ve finished the test,” Rufus said.

The man dug out a grubby answer sheet and Father Bosquet said, “Perhaps we all three should review the answers, just to maintain fairness.”

The man wasn’t happy about it, but the sheet was placed on a windowsill near Lucy where all three of them could review it.

“I see no discrepancies,” Lucy said. “His wording of the Goethe seems more felicitous than the translation provided.”

Father Bosquet said, “I concur.”

The man was fuming, but he finally said, “Looks like.”

From the top of the steps, Father Bosquet said, “Those of you registered to vote, please form an orderly line to my right. Mister Carlin passed.”

Lucy walked down another part of the wide stairs where not much notice could be taken of her. Rufus shook hands with Father Bosquet, and walked straight down the middle. The crowd parted.

***  
They were back in the present, a month older by their internal clocks with only an hour gone according to the clocks at Mason Industries. It would take them two day to fully debrief, and they’d been given a comfortable suite in the building. Jiya joined them for popcorn and a movie.

“Look, I know I’m not supposed to say anything about the mission or the history,” Jiya said, “But I’m dying to tell you about the Angel Rufus.”

Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “The Angel Rufus.”

“It’s a regional legend in southern Louisiana about a young black man who got everyone the vote in the 1908 election. He answered the hardest test they could give him, and at the moment of his triumph vanished into light.”

“I think I saw that, the last day we were there,” Lucy said.

“I think we did,” Wyatt said.

“I don’t know what you all are talking about,” Rufus said with a smile.


End file.
